Associate ProfessorMax Kelly

I am Associate Director of Research and Learning at the Centre for Humanitarian Leadership and Discipline Convenor for Development, Humanitarian and International Studies in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Deakin University. I hold a PhD in International Development from Kingston University, a Master of Science in Rural and Regional Resource Planning from the University of Aberdeen, and a Bachelor of Agricultural Science from University College Dublin.

My research focuses on the experiences of people and communities at the forefront of crisis, disaster, and humanitarian contexts. I am particularly interested in how local crisis leaders navigate and influence the complex interface between community realities and the national and international systems, policies, resources, and power structures that shape humanitarian and development responses. Drawing on perspectives from political economy, critical development studies, and place-based approaches, I examine how power operates across scales and how local actors exercise agency in contexts of uncertainty, conflict, and change.

My current research brings together two interconnected areas of inquiry. The first examines the geopolitical and geoeconomic forces reshaping aid, development cooperation, and global governance in an increasingly multipolar world. The second explores locally led crisis and humanitarian action, disaster resilience, and local leadership, with recent research focused on Sudan, Ukraine, Syria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Australian disaster contexts. Across both streams, I am committed to bridging research, policy, and practice to support more equitable, effective, and locally grounded approaches to humanitarian action and development.

I have authored and co-authored several books examining aid, development, and global political change, including Reframing the Global South in an Evolving World Order: Geopolitics and Geoeconomics of the BRICS Bloc (Springer, 2026), Foreign Aid in a World in Crisis: Shifting Geopolitics in the Neoliberal Era (Routledge, 2024), and Foreign Aid in the Age of Populism: Political Economy Analysis from Washington to Beijing (Routledge, 2019). My work also includes edited volumes, peer-reviewed journal articles, policy briefs, and book chapters that seek to connect critical scholarship with practical challenges facing humanitarian and development actors.